User:Geo Swan/Guantanamo/CSRT/verbatim transcripts/excerpts/Abu Zubaydah's description of the Khalden training camp

Here I would like to add some additional context for the Tribunal's consideration regarding the Khalden training camp and what I had to do with this camp.

To begin with, the Khalden camp has been around since back when Russia was considered our enemy due to their invasion of Aghanistan. The mission of this training camp was for the purpose of training Muslim brothers for defensive jihad. Defensive jihad means that if an aggressor or invader invades Muslim lands, no matter where, then it is every Muslim's duty to defend the land against the invader.

For example, Russia against Afghanistan and Serbia against Bosnia. In the case of Serbia against Bosnia, America helped us which I was thankful for, but we did not like being in the position of needing America's help due to our feelings toward America due to their support for Israel.

Another example of defending jihad is Russia against Chechnya and, or course, Israel against Palestine.

I became affiliated with this training camp as a Coordinator in about 1994 and all this time, as well as in times prior to 1994, our doctrine was to train against the sort of enemy invaders I spoke of a moment ago.

Please not that all this time I never once visited the camp. I did my job as a Coordinator out of Pakistan for the camp.

Our doctrine was not to train against those who did not invade Muslim lands. Our doctrine was not the same as what USAMA BIN LADEN [sic] and al Qaida  [sic] were promoting, which was and is a doctrine of offensive jihad. Our doctrine has always been to go after enemy targets, and by that I mean military targets, which include military members or civilians who work for or directly support the military.

I disagreed with the al Qaida philosophy of targeting innocent civilians like those in the World Trade Center.

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The point of all this is that when RESSAM [sic] stated about specific types of targets is inaccurate in the sense that while some of the training manuals we used to learn about targeting did specify types of targets, we did not train for any specific targets there. Also these training manuals were military manuals from America, Russia and other countries.

My last point about 3-b is that from about 1994 to about 2000, I was posted to a guest house in Peshawar, Pakistan and one in Islamabad, Pakistan as the leader or Emir of this guest house. I was not the head of the training camp.

Here at these guest houses my job was to facilitate the logistics of the brothers coming from their countries en route only to Khalden, not other camps.

And after they returned from Khalden, my job was to send them to wherever they wanted to go, especially Chechnya and Bosnia. But some of the returning brothers just wanted to go back to their normal lives, which I also facilitated.

Besides this responsibility, I would also send money to the Khalden camp. But I knew nothing about the details of the actual training at the camp.

Lastly, I want to say a few things about who I would and would not facilitate training for trhough my guest houses. There are three categories of Muslims that would come to us: Fundamentalist, Extremist and Fanatical.I was always very selective about not working with the Fanatical Muslims that wanted training, such as the Algerians of the Armed Jamaat Islamia. In fact, the Armed Jamaat Islamia threatened my life because I refused to work with them.

This is not to say that fanatics or takfiri — takfiri did not deceive me in order to get training, but that I could not have been aware of and I would not have knowingly supported that.